Verge editor laments the perverse incentives of SEO rankings.
This reminds me of an old joke:
An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, pub, Irish bar, drinks, beer, wine, whiskey, cocktails, liquor.
But since then the situation has gotten a lot shittier.
I’ve long heard arguments in favor of laser printers, but after finding out that every laser printer is printing yellow tracking dots on every page it prints, it’s made me question if I actually want one. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation that inkjet printers have tracking dots. It’s very possible some do, but in comparison it sounds like every laser printer does.
I currently have an Epson ecotank, to refill it I just pour ink in from a bottle. The ink is super cheap (at least compared to regular inkjets, and there’s no way for them to restrict what brand of liquid ink I use. Honestly it’s a very decent printing experience, and I’m not sure I’d be better off with a Brother Laser.
Only color laser printers put those yellow dots on paper. The black and white ones don’t because they can’t: They don’t have yellow toner.
So get a black and white printer and you’ll be fine.
I don’t want to be that guy, but if they really want to be tracking prints, black and white printing does not need to make it impossible. There’s other ways to code information.
There is, but since color printers are the ones that were used in counterfeiting most black and white printers don’t do that sort of thing. Plus I don’t know how you’d encode that much information in black and white without making it visible on the paper.
You could encode information as slight “mistakes” in the print. An extra dot here, a missing dot there, some slight “printing error” in some place.
There could be ways, but as you said, it’s to combat money counterfeiting. Like the Euro constellation detection in scanners, PhotoShop, and printer drivers. (fun fact: it’s quite easy to bypass, not sure why they even bothered… it only stops people who put 0 thought into counterfeiting anyway)
Tangentially related to the title, one of my favorite songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl3Ib11lIIA
The only good printer is a dead printer.
After being an idiot for 15 years, and repurchasing inkjet printers with their insanely expensive inks and guaranteed to dry out, gunk up, and quit working, I went ahead and bought a Pantum laser from Amazon, it came with a full cartridge good for 1600 B&W prints, and there was a special on for another 1600 B&W cartridge for free, the whole thing printer, two cartridges $99 bucks out the door. Steal. Works like a charm. I have, and have had, no real reason to print in color, I’m not handing out presentations, and mostly the only things I actually print are Amazon return labels sometimes, but whenever I’ve needed to print I no longer worry about the print head clogging up, and it’s like freedom from bondage.
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This article’s compatible with that. The tldr is as usual brother laser, any model.
Yes, we do print. Many industries still need printed material.
That being said, call me old school all you want, but I prefer the feel of newspaper over any screen. Data, especially online data, is so easily lost. Print remains.
There are still a need for document printing at home. Granted it’s just smaller in scale these days. Mine is mostly used for the kids. Like printing out things to color on, or something educational. On rare occasions I’ll need to print some kinda form, for work or some kinda government form, even event tickets.
That said, I really don’t know anyone that’s looking to photo print at home anymore. It’s just cheaper to have it done somewhere like Walgreens or Walmart.
That’s a good printer, but if you print a lot, I would suggest getting one with that supports duplex printing to save some paper.
It’s also something if it only supports that in software, with you needing to refill the paper once more.
“we are all printers”
Well, this would explain why frequently just refuse to work.
I appreciate the ambiguity in your comment created by the missing pronoun.
you are a printer we are all printers
Hey, that’s my printer!
Someone needs a decaf.
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It’s been over a year since I last told you to just buy a Brother laser printer, and that article has fallen down the list of Google search results because I haven’t spent my time loading it up with fake updates every so often to gain the attention of the Google search robot.
Pointing out that incentive structure and the culture that’s developed around it seems to make a lot of people mad, which is also interesting!
Both of them have reliably printed return labels and random forms and pictures for my kid to color for years now, and I have never purchased replacement toner for either one.
Neither has fallen off the WiFi or insisted I sign up for an ink-related hostage situation or required me to consider the ongoing schemes of HP executives who seem determined to make people hate a legendary brand with straightforward cash grabs and weird DRM ideas.
Don’t feel compelled to do it; my only ask is that you make this article go viral by sharing it in faux-outrage that the EIC of The Verge has published an article partially generated by AI, because after the buttons I am going to include a bunch of AI-generated copy from Google’s Gemini in order to pad this thing out.
Brother laser printers are strong contenders, especially for black and white printing needs, but weigh the pros and cons against other options like inkjets before deciding.
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Poor AutoTL;DR bot has no chance distinguishing the human-written and bot-written parts of the article
Legit just had that model in the picture completely stop working :'(
I have a similar printer but with duplex printing, which I bought because it fits under my sofa. It does everything I wanted it to do; namely, to print double-sided black and white documents and fit under my sofa.
BTW I also recommend the Brother ADS-2xxx series of document scanners, which I bought to scan multi-page double-sided documents automatically. I put the stack of papers in the top, press Go, and it scans to PDF in a few seconds.
Lol again, everyone in this community loves to call The Verge corporate shills but then has no problem upvoting and commenting on posts like these. Like if the Verge were truly biased by corporate interests, wouldn’t an article like this be the place most ripe for that bias to show through and be a problem?
I get that the community is not a hive mind and is made up of many different people, but on posts where people are criticizing the Verge because they don’t like the way they show the corporate viewpoint you’d be drowned out completely if you were to argue anything otherwise. The irony just kills me.
I am outraged that - let me check my notes - the EIC of The Verge has published an article partially generated by AI.
I too am outraged by the outrage.
